Cast

The cast is the project’s character roster, in Project Settings ▸ Cast. Each entry has a script name, the cue a writer types (BARKEEP:), which is the character’s stable identity. An optional display name is the name the player sees, and it can be translated (so BARKEEP shows as “The Barkeep” in English and “Le tavernier” in French). A grammatical gender, sent to translators, is free text (blank means not specified), with auto-suggest for the everyday values (male / female / neuter) plus any others already used in the cast, so a project can name whatever gender a language needs while keeping spellings consistent. Notes and an actor are optional, for production. The cue colour is drawn from the name rather than picked, so the same character is the same colour everywhere, in the editor and the play window alike.

Gender, notes, and actor sit behind the ▸ expander on each row.

You don’t have to fill the cast in first. When a writer types a new cue, the character joins the roster automatically. Set it up ahead of time only when you want display names, notes, or actors ready before writing starts. The script name is what runs through the story; the display name is presentation, chosen per language.

Three things here feed the rest of production. Display names are translated as part of Languages & translation, the grammatical gender travels with every localisation export so a gendered language can inflect that character’s lines (see Localisation), and the actor you assign feeds the voice-recording pipeline.

What reaches the game

Only the script name and the display name are compiled into the published .patterc bundle. Grammatical gender, notes, and the actor’s name are project-side context for translators and the production team; they are deliberately left out, so a game you ship never contains a real person’s name or a writer’s private notes about a character.

Speaker qualifiers

A speaker qualifier is what a screenplay calls a character extension: how a line is delivered, not who says it. TAM (O.S.) is Tam heard but not seen, PLAYER (V.O.) is a thought or narration, and GUARD (RADIO) is a voice through a radio. A qualified line is still the same character, so TAM and TAM (O.S.) count as one in the cast, the report, coverage, and every script export. You never need a second cast member such as TAM_OS to get one.

A project starts with three:

Qualifier	Game ID	Meaning
V.O.	vo	Voice-over: the character isn’t in the scene (a thought, narration, a voice in the ear)
O.S.	os	Off-screen: the character is there, but not seen (the next room, behind a door)
RADIO	radio	Heard through a radio, a phone, or a loudspeaker

Change the list in Project Settings ▸ Qualifiers: add your own (PHONE, PA, O.C.), rename, reorder, describe, or remove them. Each has a name, which the script shows, and a Game ID, which your game’s code relies on. Renaming V.O. to VO changes the name a game shows, never what its code switches on. A new qualifier’s Game ID is made from its name until you edit it, and changing a Game ID updates every line that uses it.

A qualifier’s name is translated like a display name, for the qualifiers your lines use (see Localisation). Only those qualifiers are compiled into the .patterc, with their Game ID and name; the description is for writers.